Bicultural Bicentennial
by namelesspanda
Summary: The American Bicentennial at Downton Abbey...little Cora, M/M's great-granddaughter, wants fireworks to celebrate the occasion. Fireworks she shall get as her mother, Catherine, goes up against the Dowager Countess. One-shot.


_A/N: Canon one-shot. Set on the American Bicentennial at Downton Abbey. Little Cora, Mary and Matthew's great-granddaughter, wants celebratory fireworks. Fireworks she shall get as her mother, Catherine, goes up against the Dowager Countess…no guarantee of fluff at all._

* * *

3 July 1976

The Dowager Countess of Grantham sighed as though her granddaughter had orchestrated the end of the world. "You can't be serious."

"Granny—" Catherine began. Almost thirty years old, and she could hardly get a word in edgewise whenever her grandmother started to speak, she thought exasperatedly as she cast her blue eyes to her lap. Of course, the Dowager had her opinions, and Catherine was timid by contrast—everyone was.

"The Americans may be our allies, but they are _not_ our friends. Which is how it should be." Lady Grantham slammed her cane on the floor of the library, which had lost its luster but was still quite recognizable to her as the spot where she'd shoved Edith (after a little tussle over the toy dog) when she was hardly six. "I forbid it."

"But Cora wants it."

The Dowager Countess sighed again as she thought of Cathy's daughter, with her dark hair and light eyes—a miniature of the woman she was named for, except with a different accent. "This is what happens when you name her after Mama. She turns American on you."

"She's her own person!" Catherine protested.

Her grandmother snorted. "She takes after Mama in every way possible."

"I don't think we need anything grand, just a few small—"

"Fireworks! In the garden? Have you gone mad, Cathy?"

"It isn't dangerous or—"

"Hmph!" The Dowager straightened up to her full height. "What will it be next, darling? Do you want me to allow you to place a _bomb_ underneath the dining table? Or let you move a large tank into the house? And to celebrate _American independence?_" (The final words were spat with ferocious contempt that would have made the Dowager's grandmother proud.) "But what will become of spoiling her? All very well in novels, but—"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Mary closed her eyes, seeming to suggest prayer. "Mama and Papa spoiled your Great-Aunt Sybil _terribly._"

Catherine breathed out heavily, tapping her manicured nails on the table. The old wood was smooth beneath her fingers.

"And I'm sure you remember what happened to her."

"_She married the chauffeur,_" Catherine said as though reciting a particularly dull passage from a textbook. "For Christ's sake, Granny, I've heard this, and this is different—"

"She wanted trousers, that was it," Mary explained. "And the next thing we knew, she had a crush on the chauffeur that—well, I didn't think it would amount to anything, but it _did. _So if you're going to give Cora this…American patriotism…be prepared for the consequences." She finished with an ominous glare, which Catherine met—her usually cloudless gaze steely.

"I don't think there's a reason to worry. All I'm asking is that you give Cora this."

"The answer is no." Mary reached for her stick as her granddaughter rose effortlessly to her feet.

"What would Grand-papa have said?" It was a last-ditch effort, a low blow, and Catherine immediately regretted the words. But she couldn't back down. She placed her hand on her hip and stared down at her grandmother.

Mary was rooted to the spot, her eyes unseeing, and if not for her immaculate posture and the gloved hand that twitched over the top of her cane, she would have appeared quite dead. The slightly musty smell of the library reminded her of hours spent with him as he pored over estate documents well into the hours of the night. Reminded her of how she'd whisper in his ear—_come to bed, darling—_and he'd smile sweetly up at her and tell her he'd be just a few more minutes, until she absolutely insisted and he would stand up and say, _Of course, Lady Mary._ And they would ascend the stairs together, whether they were thirty-five or seventy—it was the same.

"I think I know," said Catherine, and Mary's hearing snapped back to reality while the rest of her was trapped elsewhere, so her granddaughter's voice seemed to be narrating her memories. "I think that Grand-papa would have gone into Ripon with Cora and arranged for the fireworks _himself._ Only you would blow something like this so completely out of proportion." She huffed in frustration and turned on her heel.

"I'm not your Grand-papa," Mary said, stiffly. "You should have asked him."

"Jesus." Catherine ran a hand through her long pale hair. "Grand-papa's _dead,_ Granny." She folded her hands in her lap and softened her voice. "It's the dementia. They told you, two years ago, that you might start to forget."

"He isn't dead," Mary said. "He's upstairs."

Catherine pressed her lips into a tight line. "Granny—" she said gently.

"He'll be right down," Mary insisted, her eyes vacant. "He's coming."

"Granny, you have to try to remember, please—"

"Matthew?" She turned her face up to the ceiling, as if she expected to see him floating up there. "Where are you?"

"He—isn't—there!" Catherine took her grandmother's shoulders and shook, a little harder than she meant to. "Look at me, Granny."

Petunia, the yellow Labrador, trundled across the room and curled up at Mary's feet.

"You have to listen to me!"

Mary was trembling. "He's coming," she repeated, staring into the distance with eyes that were the slightest bit damp.

"Granny!"

Petunia barked solemnly and Mary reached down a wizened hand to pat her. "Quiet, Isis," she said.

Catherine sighed. "The day today is the fourth of July, nineteen seventy-six. The American Bicentennial." Her voice had the texture of mousse—airy, delicate, sweet.

"No fireworks," said Mary quietly, as though she were learning.

And suddenly Catherine didn't feel like pitying anymore. "Have you forgotten that this could be the last time that Cora could ask for this?"

Her grandmother blinked.

"Leukemia!" Catherine yelled. "Damn it, Granny, don't you remember that's why we've come here? Treatment's through, there's nothing else—nothing bloody else that they can do." There was a high-pitched giggle from above and she flinched, choking on her words. "That could be her last laugh. Today could be her last day where she isn't bedridden. I just—don't—know."

Mary's eyebrows were furrowed. "Cora—leukemia," she said, watching the dog's tail wag lazily back and forth.

"We've all known. For a year."

"I don't—"

"I told you, last September." Catherine crossed her arms. "Look, I wanted your approval, but I don't need it. I'll arrange for it myself if I have to, but my little girl is _going_ to see those fireworks."

* * *

4 July 1976

The Dowager sat on the old bench and watched as the first of the roman candles exploded. The wood was worn, chipped, and starting to break, but it was the same wood that she had sat upon with her beloved husband…from the days of their youth to the end of his life. It had been ten years since she'd wheeled him out to the spot again, taken his wrinkled hand in hers, and laughed halfheartedly at his comment that life had brought them full circle as the wind whipped her grey hair into her face.

That had been the last time they'd gone to the bench together.

The bangs of the pyrotechnics echoed in the grounds. Mary pushed back a lock of thin white hair. The colorful showering of sparks reflected in the eyes of the little girl seated next to her, her frail legs swinging off the bench and her red-white-and-blue hair ribbon fluttering in the breeze. "Gran," said Cora, not moving her gaze from the explosions, "the 'mericans picked the same colours as th' Union Jack."

"They weren't creative enough to think of their own."

Cora considered this, tilting her head to the side as she waved a dead sparkler stick in the air. "But I'm wearing th' colours of both 'merica _and_ England!"

"Well." A multicoloured firework went off near the edge of the field, raining a rainbow. "I suppose you are."

"Maybe _that's_ why they chose it," said Cora brightly. "So I can wear both."

"Perhaps it is."

Catherine was walking up the field towards them, and Cora got to her feet, scuffing her little black shoes in the dirt. "Mummy!"

"Yes, my darling?" Cathy scooped up her daughter in her arms. She winced a little as she settled her on her hip.

"Happy Fourth of July," Cora whispered as she turned her dark head to watch the scintillating sparks.

* * *

Mary, Countess of Grantham, was peacefully laid to rest a few months later beside Matthew, the Earl. Cathy cried for weeks when they were joined by Cora.

On the outside, the tears eventually stopped. On the inside, they never quite ceased.


End file.
